Brightest
“The Spot makes other headlamps look like upheld lighters at an Eagles concert,” one tester wrote after night-hiking in Maine’s Baxter State Park. The Spot’s yellowy, ultrabright LED mimics the warm glow of an incandescent bulb, and is deeply nestled in a grooved cone that throws a focused beam almost the length of a football field (see chart for comparisons).

That makes this headlamp ideal for biking and off-trail jaunts. The Spot also shone for two days in spot mode on alkaline batteries, 15 hours longer than the next closest competitor on a similar setting. When less light was called for, a whopping eight settings—three strengths and a blinker for both the spot and the diffuse three-LED flood—offered our Moab tester more brightness options than he knew what to do with. Unique feature: If you accidentally leave it on, the Spot switches itself off after 10 hours to conserve battery life. The catch: It’s bulkier (the size of a tangerine) than the others, and its loose tilter slips during trail running and banzai descents.

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Sponsored: After looking at a map and seeing where you’re heading, it’s always amazing to see it appear up ahead of you in real life. Here’s our Editor-in-Chief hiking to two unnamed tarns near the headwaters of Lime Creek, about 3.5 miles west of Molas Pass on the Colorado Trail. Continued thanks to Mountain Hardwear for making the #ColoradoTrailFest come to life. #LiveBreatheHike #MountainHardwear Photo By Kennan Harvey